CAIRO (AFP) - Egypt said on Thursday it would no longer tolerate Palestinians infiltrating the country from the Gaza Strip, and threatened to break the legs of anyone crossing the Rafah border illegally. "Anyone who breaches the border will have their legs broken," Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit was quoted as saying by the official MENA news agency on public television overnight.

This makes Aboul Gheit sound like some third-rate mafia thug. Except he doesn't look very tough, does he?

Issandr El Amrani is a Cairo-based writer and consultant. His reporting and commentary on the Middle East and North Africa has appeared in The Economist, London Review of Books, Financial Times, The National, The Guardian, Time and other publications. He also publishes one of the longest-running blog in the region, www.arabist.net.